Tongan Parliament

Session Closes No Salary Reductions

From Our Own Correspondent

Nukualofa, Sept. 10.

PARLIAMENT has closed its doors and, predictions notwithstand ing, the Executive Council were able to get their estimates through without alteration.

The anticipated proposal to reduce salaries caused a rumpus when it was tabled, as it was looked upon darkly by Government members. The whole ended in the usual compromise.

The executive agreed to a commis sion being appointed for the specific purpose of exhaustively searching the Civil Service for possible avenues of retrenchment, and with this promise, the House accepted the budget.

The estimated revenue for the year ended June 30, 1932, is £71,315 and expenditure £69,045.

To balance the budget a motor li cence is to be levied, and consumers of spirituous liquors will in future be obliged to fork out another 6d. for each bottle purchased. The latter measure will affect no one overmuch, but motorists are grumbling at the former because the Government is giving them nothing in return. Had the Civil Servants been deprived of 10 per cent, of their salaries, it might reasonably have been hoped that the roads would have benefited; as it is there is no special provision made in this direction, so the cars and lor ries will still continue to bump along in the same old style.

One wonders that the House did not attack that swollen surplus, fail ing the “cut,” and urge the appropri ation of say, £10,000 towards road im provements.

Several Commissions

Appointed

The only tangible outcome of the session seems to be the appointment of several Commissions. Apart from the Retrenchment Commission, there is an Education Commission and a Lands’ Commission, and several minor ones. There is, in fact, a surfeit of Commissions and, in common with “dummy” in other countries, we view them with some suspicion.

However, it would be premature at this date to give a determined opinion -—we must give them a “fair go.”

It is significant and gratifying though that, as far as we can gather, no parliamentarian proposed the setting up of an Income Tax Com mission. This Kingdom has been so sufficiently prosperous that the bug bear of the taxpayer in other coun tries has never visited these islands to sting our legislators to further en deavours and we fervently hope it never will.